Solstice Solace
by kismet-wayfinder
Summary: Oneshot. Jane, daughter of Wendy, knows that with her fourteenth birthday will come too many changes. She knows she is soon to grow up and can accept it, but she can't as easily accept not getting to fly away with Peter so often as she did in years past.


Jane stood in front of a full-length mirror in the nursery room of her home, observing the way her recently cut hair curved beneath her chin ever just-so slightly. Her chin was protruding just a bit, giving shape in a way it had never before these past few months. Her lips were quite full, as well, and when taking them into account along with her nose and the shape of her eyes, she could see why many people often told her that she favored her mother.

_"Oh, how you look so like your mother Wendy did when she was but a girl of thirteen, as well."_

It was nothing neither new nor unexpected. Jane figured the only real difference in looks between the two of them was that her skin was a paler shade and her hair and eyes a different color. While her mother had soft brown hair, her own, straighter locks were a vivid red color. Her eyes were a startling green, as opposed to the lovely baby blue that sparkled in her mother's eyes. She was also much thinner, and considerably less curved – though, this had to do, she supposed, with the fact that she was not quite a woman yet.

"I'm not _just_ a girl either, though," she mused aloud in an indifferent manner, now as she pulled down on the sides of her hair, seeing just how long it was when pulled out completely straight. "If I was but a girl, I wouldn't have to be leaving the nursery come my next birthday. I'm still not quite sure why I have to at all in the first place. Mother hasn't any other babies to stay in here in my stead."

It was then that the indifference began to fade from her voice, so quickly that a person could get the idea that she'd only been feigning said indifference in the first place. Jane was very good at pretending – a veritable expert in make-believe, in fact – and to top it off she also almost never got caught up in the lies she told. She evened this out in her head due to the other fact that she only lied when it was absolutely necessary to do so, and never for sport or out of boredom.

For instance there had been the time she lied about donating money to the jar passed about at school to help the children who lived at the orphanage. In truth she'd kept all her money and saved it up over time, in order to be able to buy a coat for a fellow classmate come wintertime - a classmate whose family had had no means to get their daughter so much as a wool pullover to ward off the cold. It was still charitable; it just wasn't what she was supposed to do. To avoid a conflict or trouble or misunderstanding, of course she had lied about what _specifically_ she had put her savings towards. Sometimes it was for the best to let people go on in their ignorance of things. Jane had come to find this to be true in the thirteen years she'd spent thus far on Earth.

Now turning to the side before the mirror, she eyed her profile with a slight sense of scrutiny. She supposed she looked normal enough, though she wished to be a couple inches taller. Scrawny – that was the description she'd heard said about her. It wasn't an offensive word, but she didn't like to be assigned any label, insulting or uplifting. She also thought it was silly for anyone to give titles to others at all. Take for instance the way her father called her mother "dearest", or contrary-wise, the way she called him "my darling"; what was wrong with saying Jack and Wendy, or Father and Mother to one another?

"Nevertheless, they're certainly not alone in doing that," Jane then said to herself, before turning to face the mirror straight on. "It won't be happening to me, though."

Jane had decided from about age ten onward that she would certainly never take on a husband of her own. As far as never say never went, she knew it was very possible that she could change her mind some time in the future, but at the end of most days she had a feeling she would keep her mind made up. The case happened to be that Jane knew she wasn't sure what love was exactly, but she could attest to what a close attachment to someone felt like, and she pretty much figured that this alone was quite important when it came to things like love and courting, as well as engagements and marriage.

Jane herself had felt a particular attachment to just one person. It was different from how she felt toward her parents and uncles. It was different than how she felt toward the small circle of friends she had at the school. It was like no other feeling she had for anyone else, and the best way she could describe it was as a strong, fierce feeling that sometimes struck her bosom, almost reminescent of a flame that could not easily be smothered.

Looking over from the mirror and at a wall calendar instead, Jane saw that it was the twenty-first of December, and afterward she thusly took to murmuring the number of months until springtime would come again. "_One – two – three – four . . ._"

So in just about four months' time she would get to see the person she was so strongly attached to again, when he would come to the nursery window and take her away for perhaps the very last time, to help him do the Spring Cleaning at the little house in Neverland.

Becoming aware of a sinking, hollow feeling that had begun to ache in her chest, Jane looked back to the mirror as tears surfaced in her eyes, though they stayed there and did not fall, almost as if she had full control over whether or not they decided to do so. She would have rather believed that the upcoming Spring Cleaning would _not_ be the last Spring Cleaning, but with turning fourteen came the aforementioned move from the nursery (and, of course, the move away from constant access to its window), and with all _that_ came her encroaching womanhood, which would certainly ban her permanently from the realms of Neverland for once and for all.

It was sad and needlessly cruel in her honest opinion, that something she had no control over would surely come like a thief in the night and mark her for certain expulsion from the land of mermaids, Indians, lagoons, pirate ships and fairies. How remarkably tragic would that day be when this fate would surely fall upon her? Looking away from the mirror, she slowly made her way over to her bed. She didn't want to think more about how terrible the inevitable made her feel – how powerless it rendered her. She despised feeling so insecure.

Turning back her covers, Jane slipped beneath them and looked over to the other empty bed in the room. Her nanny used to sleep there in the room with her on that bed, though she'd been dismissed from her post at the house almost an entire year ago now. It was quite lonely at times at night in the nursery, but Jane still had her mother, who would certainly come and tuck her in each night without fail, even if her father thought that Jane was honestly a bit too old for the ritual to occur. Her mother always overrode his feelings on the matter however, and for that much, Jane was glad. No, she certainly was no baby or tot, but she still liked being tucked in – and who had the right to tell her that she shouldn't?

Lying back on her pillow, she pulled the covers up to her chin and waited for her mother to come on into the room. After a moment's quiet, however, Jane imagined that she heard a jingle - like a sound made from a small bell - coming from somewhere near the window.

"Peter?" she asked, sitting bolt upright at once. "Peter, are you really here even though it's not yet springtime?"

Hearing the jingle sound again, Jane hurriedly left the bed and slid her feet into her slippers, before running over to the closed window. With much effort, she grabbed tightly onto the window and pushed it upward, before hanging her head out from it and looking wildly from right to left, and then from left to right. "Peter Pan, are you anywhere near? I swear I heard a fairy making noise round and about here somewhere!"

Narrowing her eyes as she continued to look out into the dark, winter night, Jane eventually found herself gazing down in the direction of the snow-fallen street below, where a bell was affixed to a newspaper stand that had been closed for the night. As the wind whipped by it, it jingle-jangled on occasion, and as she realized it, the redheaded girl withdrew her head from the window and turned around.

Feeling a bit downcast after having gotten her own hopes up so high in the first place, Jane was ready to return to bed and again wait for her mother to come in. She had taken a few steps away from the window when she paused, hearing someone make a sound from just outside it.

"_Psst_!" they said; turning around, a smile broke out on Jane's face as she saw who'd made the noise.

"Jane!" exclaimed a boy who was clothed in vines and fig leaves, grinning his own self as he hovered just outside the nursery window, seeming to float in midair. "Surprised to see me?"

. . . . . . . . .

Not ten minutes later, Wendy - clad in an evening gown and bathrobe – quietly opened the door that led into the nursery, before peering over to find her daughter's bed completely empty. Though she at first gave a start, grasping at her chest in fear, she soon looked straight ahead to find the nursery window open, a frosty winter breeze blowing into the room and causing the curtain panels to dance about.

Rushing forward to the window, Wendy stuck her head out and gazed toward the sky above. Though she could see nothing or no one dotting the night sky, she finally allowed herself to relax and give a relieved sort of sigh. The empty bed and opened, high-story window only meant one thing. She knew who had taken her daughter away, and even though it was not springtime yet, Wendy could feel assured in believing that her daughter couldn't have been in safer hands other than her own.

"Just bring her back soon, Peter," she spoke aloud into the night, before pulling away and moving over to the bed; she needed to fix it, after all, for when her daughter would surely return.


End file.
